not having the same level of influence in terms of those races. before hand,speakerboehnerhada hard time getting some of his more conservative members to buy in to certain concrete hiatt -- compromises. going forward, we will have to see if the tea party conservatives will seem to have the same support. the president now has the upper hand and when he talks to speaker boehner he will have to take that message back and he gets a little bit more behind him. >> week and a shop with a meeting between the leaders and the white house. what is the dynamic? >> it will be very interesting to see. hopefully we will hear from them exactly what their conversation was with the president. it is unlikely that we're going to see a detailed agreement on specific issues. are we going to hear about tax breaks or how entitlement reform is going to happen in the deal? on not sure. these figures are going to be out there. they're all going to be scrambling to set the tone in the way that they want to set it. of they will have discussions like the democratic leaders also say let these are the areas where we ma

boehneristhe speaker of the house. barack obama got less vote than he got the last time. there hasn't been a president elected with a weaker mandate than woodrow wilson. he is the one who needs to hammer out a deal. speaker bainerer is a reasonable man. he is the right guy to strike a deal with. but don't start with nancy pelosi making demands for raising tax rates. let's work through all the issues. i agree, what's at stake is dramatic, it's the economy of the american people. >> eric: quickly, do you think we will have a deal by the end of year? >> i am getting more dubious. but i hope so. >> eric: margie, how about you? >> viheard some republicans sound like they want to come to the table. not everyone. not matt, with all due respect. but i do think that we -- i feel more optimistic when i am watching the postr post poll. >> eric: we have $16 trillion in debt. it's just only getting bigger. thargs for joining us. >> thank you. >> eric: jamie? >> jamie: the fiscal cliff. how does it affect you, your kid, your family and tuition rates? a lot. we are going to tell what you you need

says he wants to see higher tax rates. john vitter says axel in not. >> --johnboehnersaysclearly not. >> it is a lot easier to say at this level of generality. it becomes harder to enacted. the number of times of with the head of the cbo, senator so and so would call me up and say i want to talk about tax reform and i would walk in and the head is one talking point which is brought in the base and lower the rate. what are you willing to scale back? mortgage interest, cannot touch that. charitable, cannot touch that. you go down the list. one of the reasons of these new ideas being attractive is a are obscuring what has to be cut back. >> there is still a hard choice there. >> we are not saying we are going to cut out your ability to deduct your mortgage but i will get to keep my ability to deduct my local tax. everything goes into a pot. everybody gets to keep their deductions but you cannot be too greedy about it. it does have to limit the amount they can benefit from it. >> that is the selling point. >> the notion here, can you do this and have the only effect of the wealthiest

for governor romney, i worked forjohnboehner. icalled up our didge cal -- digital guy and said tell me about twitter and he said you don't need to know that. that is not going to take off. so much of what we did was driven from the bottom up through twitter. even when toivens plane, we would go -- even when i was on the plane, jen was on a much bigger plane called air force 1. i was on hairforce 1. by the time i came back to the front of the plane i would see on twitter i already made news. >> when you say people, you don't mean people. you mean reporters. >> or people. [laughter] >>that was on the -- free to be you and me c.d. reporters are people. but this was kind of backstage conversation you were watching play out on twitter. sometimes real people. it was more important for you how the journalists were using twitter. >> it became an incredible newsing a gator. you could see now like t.p.m. more left leaning. see what they are saying. see what folks on the right are saying. folks in the middle are supposed to be saying. what the outside groups are saying and you sort of got a good snapsh

party voters. you know, mitch mcconnell has to worry about a primary collage in 2014,andboehnerhasto worry about a leadership challenge from the right so there's certainly a primp on what they can do. that said, the incentives have changed, and you saw chris christie's incentive changed, and there's, you know, the fiscal cliff creates different incentives, and i think the end of -- the end of that one term goal means that different republicans will start to have different incentives which means that on immigration, perhaps on a long term deficit deal, there will be avenues for potential cooperation. whether, you know, whether it takes, you know, more ass kickings or a real statesman to lead the republicans towards a different future, i think that depends on what happens over the next few years. >> i mean, i would add that, you know, there's a real brulalty to sitting in washington, that was just breathtaking to me. as a relative outsider, going into the mill and the buzz saw of the political apparatus in washington, and i think that, you know, it's bipartisan horribleness. it's no